Jul 7, 2011

Today we are introducing an elegantly designed and typographically pleasing theme, Chteau.

The Chteau Theme

Designed by Ignacio Ricci, Chteau has been crafted with close attention to detail and typography. Its beautiful, minimalist look allows you to make your content the focal point of your blog.

Aside from a brilliant design, this theme offers many cool features that help you to personalize your blog. There are two color schemes, three layout options, custom accent color, Custom Header Image, Custom Background, six widget areas, and three post formats ― Aside, Gallery and Image. It's loaded with options that make the theme flexible enough to fit a variety of sites.

We love developers and the applications they build to help extend WordPress.com in new and meaningful ways. To continue providing support for developers who build applications that integrate with WordPress.com, we’re announcing support for OAuth 2, as well as a new developer portal, develop.wordpress.com.

Starting today WordPress.com supports a new method of authentication which makes it extremely easy for third party applications to connect with WordPress.com blogs. This new method uses an open protocol, OAuth2, to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard way. OAuth2 allows applications to access a WordPress.com blog without ever asking for personal details such as a password or username. Connections from applications can easily be managed within the dashboard and connections won’t break when a username or password is changed.

In addition to supporting the new authentication feature, we’re also launching develop.wordpress.com.If you’re interested in learning more about OAuth2 and other ways to integrate with WordPress.com, then this developer portalis for you.

Develop.wordpress.com contains some handy documents and resources about how you can develop using WordPress.com technologies. The site also houses a channel where you can contact us directly regarding issues such as OAuth2 authentication, client access, and embedding new media types on WordPress.com.

These documents are only the beginning - we'll be adding more resources and tools over time as the developer ecosystem grows.

Memolane is one example of the many possibilities for integration of third party applications with WordPress.com. Memolane allows you to pull posts directly from your WordPress.com blog into a graphical time line with other elements of your online life. You can easily view, add to, and share this timeline online. As of today, you can also embed your personal Memolane on your WordPress.com blog using anew shortcode.

Jul 5, 2011

Get more readers by Publicizing on Facebook, Twitter, and now LinkedIn, Too!阅读原文»

Want to share your WordPress.com posts with your LinkedIn connections? Now you can!Today we are happy to announce that our Publicize feature connects with LinkedIn. To activate Publicize for LinkedIn, head to Settings -> Sharingin your dashboard and click Connect to LinkedIn. Please note that you need to have a LinkedIn account before you can connect it with your WordPress.com site.

After you’ve approved the connection,you’ll see LinkedIn listed in the Publish module next to the post editor.Here you can customize the message for the update you'll send out to LinkedIn and any other sharing services you have connected. You can also opt out of Publicizing a particular post by unchecking the box next to the name of the service. Below is an example of an update shown on LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn sharing button was also recently added to the Sharing feature on WordPress.com, which can be displayed at the bottom of your posts and pages. Visit your Settings -> Sharing panel and you’ll see LinkedIn as one of the Available Services.

Over five years ago, when WordPress.com was just getting started, we launched a theme that has become near and dear to many of us. A theme that even then stood out from all the others with its, well, its banana-smoothie-ness. It’s about time to shake up the Banana Smoothie, isn’t it? Maybe even give some other fruit a shake? We think so. Let’s take a look at its delicious successor, Fruit Shake.

The goal of Fruit Shake was to capture Banana Smoothie’s essence and serve it up to everyone with a refreshed design ― and even more fruity flavor. Hence, your choice of three fruit-flavored color schemes: Banana, Blueberry, and my favorite, Dragon Fruit. And just like, Banana Smoothie did, Fruit Shake comes with its own fruit shake recipe widget ― courtesy of the incomparable Jane Wells ― that lets you share your love of bananas, blueberries, and dragon fruit with your blog readers. Also, there may or may not be a secret, unlockable, fruit in Fruit Shake. Or not. I can't say much more than that except, well, it might be a secret. If it even exists.

Of course, if you just like the basic colors of Fruit Shake you can also personalize the design with your own custom header and custom background image. You can even remove all the widgets from the sidebar in Appearance → Widgets and create a sleek tumblelog look for your blog. In other words, you don’t have to be obsessed with fruit to enjoy Fruit Shake. It doesn’t hurt though.

If you want to know more about the cool features in Fruit Shake we've made a page that outlines them all on the Theme Showcase. You can read up on Fruit Shake there and check out a live demo or just activate it on your blog and start experimenting! And if you have a self-hosted installation of WordPress you haven't been left out of the fun. Fruit Shake will be making its way to the official WordPress Theme directory where you can download it and install it on your blog.

For those who have joined WPWebHost Affiliate iPad2 Giveaway, I bet you have been waiting and anticipating for this moment. We have made some substantial growth to the number of affiliates in our Affiliate Programme, thanks to your participation and effort in this giveaway.

Now without further ado, we are pleased to announce the winner is…

Mohd Fazreen (fazreen.com)!!!

Congrats! The cool Ipad2 is yours now! We will contact you through the email for further details. =)

Jul 4, 2011

Here in the U.S. we are observing Independence Day, and I can’t think of a more fitting way to mark a day that celebrates freedom than by releasing more free software to help democratize publishing around the globe.I’m excited to announce that WordPress 3.2 is now available to the world, both as an update in your dashboard and a download on WordPress.org. Version 3.2 is our fifteenth major release of WordPress and comes just four months after 3.1 (which coincidentally just passed the 15 million download mark this morning), reflecting the growing speed of development in the WordPress community and our dedication to getting improvements in your hands as soon as possible. We’re dedicating this release to noted composer and pianist George Gershwin.

Before we get to the release, in anticipation of the State of the Word speech at the upcoming WordCamp San Francisco(the annual WordPress conference)we’re doing a survey or census of the WordPress world. If you have a moment, please fill out this survey and we’ll share whatwe learn bypublishing the aggregate results in August.

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme,fulfillingour plan to replace the default theme every year. Start writing your first post in our redesigned post editor and venture to the full-screen button in the editing toolbar to enter the new distraction-free writing or zen mode, my personal favorite feature of the release. All of the widgets, menus, buttons, and interface elements fade away to allow you to compose and edit your thoughts in a completely clean environment conducive to writing, but when your mouse strays to the top of the screen your most-used shortcuts are right there where you need them. (I like to press F11 to take my browser full-screen, getting rid of even the OS chrome.)

Under the hood there have been a number of improvements, not the least of which is the streamlining enabled by our previously announced plan of retiring support for PHP4, older versions of MySQL, and legacy browsers like IE6, which allows us to take advantage of more features enabled by new technologies. The admin bar has a few more shortcuts to your most commonly-used actions. On the comment moderation screen, the new approve & reply feature speeds up your conversation management. You’ll notice in your first update after 3.2 that we’ll only be updating the files that have changed with each new release instead of every file in your WordPress installation, which makes updates significantly faster on all hosting platforms. There are also some fun new theme features shown off by Twenty Eleven, like the ability to have multiple rotating header images to highlight all of your favorite photos.

WordPress 3.2 is going to be released very soon, and we want you to be ready! Take note: the minimum requirements are changing.

PHP and MySQL

As of 3.2, you’ll need to be running PHP 5.2.4 andMySQL 5.0. As we mentioned almost a year ago when we announced that this change was coming, the percentage of people running older versions of PHP and MySQL is relatively low. With more than 45 million people using WordPress, though, even a small percentage can mean a lot of people! Don’t caught with your pants dashboard down — make sure you’re running compatible versions of PHP and MySQL before you update tomorrow when WordPress 3.2 is released.

Log in to your hosting account, and check to make sure you have at leastPHP 5.2.4 andMySQL 5.0. Most of the major hosts already default to these or newer versions, but there are some exceptions. Check to see which versions you are running, and if you’re still on an older version, it should be as simple as changing a dropdown menu and clicking Save to get up to date.

If you don’t know how to find this information in your hosting account or you don’t even know how to access your hosting control panel because someone else manages that for you, don’t fret. You can find out if you’re ready for 3.2 with the Health Check plugin. In your dashboard, go to Plugins→ Add New and search for “health check” (it should be the first result). Install it, activate it, and it will tell you if you need to update anything.

If you need more help, contact your host’s customer service and use this email template to ask them to help you.

Hi there. I host my domain [example.com] with you, and I run WordPress on my site. The minimum requirements are changing to PHP 5.2.4 andMySQL 5.0, and I would appreciate your help in confirming that my site’s setup meets these requirements. If I’m currently running an older version of PHP or MySQL, could you update it for me, or tell me how to do it? Thanks so much!

If your host replies that they can’t update to these versions, it might be time to look for a new host.

IE6 and Outdated Browsers

With 3.2, we’re also dropping support for Internet Explorer 6, a 10-years-old outdated browser that even Microsoft is ready to leave behind. From now on, if you access your WordPress dashboard from an outdated browser, we’ll let you know. Why? Because as web technology improves, so does WordPress, as we build features to take advantage of these improvements. If you’re using an out-of-date browser, chances are you’re missing out.

If your browser is out of date, you’ll see a friendly orangey-yellow box in your dashboard letting you know you a newer version is available (which you can dismiss, of course). If you’re using IE6, though, the box will be red, and your dashboard will not function properly. If you’re stuck on IE6 because the computer you use is maintained by a business, library, school, or the like, and you are not able to download a newer browser, here’s a sample email you can use to ask your boss/administrator/IT guys to update the browser.

Hi there. The computer I use at [where you use the computer] is equipped with an out-of-date web browser. Internet Explorer 6 was created 10 years ago, before modern web standards, and does not support modern web applications. More and more sites and applications are dropping support for IE6, including the new version of WordPress. Even Microsoft, the makers of IE6, are counting down until IE6 goes the way of the dinosaur (see http://www.ie6countdown.com/ for more information).Can you please install an updated version of IE or any modern browser (see http://browsehappy.com for more information) on the available computers? Thank you very much.

Fourth of July might sound like normal day to most of you. But to Americans, it was the the day where Americans celebrate their independance from England on July 4, 1776. Hereby, we at WPWebHost feel the same proud moments and wish to share the joy by giving special 3 days discounts on all our WordPress hosting plans.

We will be giving out 47% discount on all our shared hosting plans and on all payment terms.